Emulators Pulled From Android Market

Smartphone gaming is a huge business and one of the most
popular ways of gaming on the handsets is via emulators but bad news today for one of the
most popular emulator developers, who has seen his apps disappear from the Android
Market without any warning.

yongzh, (or Yong Zhang as he’s known in real life)
is the developer behind the popular Nesoid, Gameboid, GBCoid, Snesoid, Gearoid,
Ataroid and N64oid emulators which have been unceremoniously dumped from
the Android Market. As well as having these apps removed, yongzh has had his developer
privileges revoked. Last month following a complaint from Sega, Google removed
two of the apps but has now taken the decision to remove all apps developed by
Zhang. The emulators were among
the most popular paid apps in the market and Google has yet to give an official
reason why the apps have been removed.

For those worried that the emulators will no longer be
available, Zhang has migrated some of them across to third-party app store SlideME
and has made them available for free for the moment, to allow those who have
already paid for them in the Android Market to get them again. Of course many
people who didn’t pay for them in the Market will be able to take advantage of
this offer. Zhang told Engadget that money from the Android Market was his primary source of income
and since the apps have been removed, he has been receiving a lot of emails
from worried fans of the emulators.

While the emulators are currently available in the SlideMe store, Sega is likely to pursue Zhang where ever he makes the
apps available and they could be removed sooner rather than later.